Research News
February 25, 2016
Researchers contribute to Great Salt Lake study
iUTAH researchers Sarah Null from Utah State University and Maura Hahnenberger from Salt Lake Community College contributed to a formal paper concerning issues surrounding the Great Salt Lake. A white paper detailing the Impacts of Water Development on Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Front came out on February 24, 2016.
The lake has recently reached new historic lows. Water diversions continue to reduce the water supply to the lake, reducing its elevation by 11 feet and exposing much of the lake bed. "Because most of Utah’s population is located near Great Salt Lake, health impacts from exposed lake bed could potentially affect even more people," the paper warns.
Contributors to the paper hope that it will start dialogue about how important the lake is to Utah’s ecosystem, economy, and quality of life. Other collaborators on the paper include Wayne Wurtsbaugh and Peter Wilcock of USU, Craig Miller of the Utah Division of Water Resources, and Frank Howe of USU and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
Press: USU White Paper | Deseret News | Salt Lake Tribune | Herald Journal | KSL News | KUER Radio | KUSU Radio | The Atlantic/CitiLab | Inhabit | Headline & Global News | Digital Journal | Newser | Houston Chronicle | HuffPost Science | EcoWatch | The Weather Channel | AccuWeather
February 24, 2016
Undergrads Present Water-Related iUTAH Research at UCUR
Students from all over the state participated in the annual Utah Conference on Undergraduate Research (UCUR), held February 19, 2016 on the University of Utah campus. Six students associated with iUTAH EPSCoR presented research at this year’s conference. Viviane Baji, Matthew Barnett, and Jordan Risley, all from Utah State University, examined different aspects of the Utah Water Survey/iPad Project conducted last summer. Student participants include:
- Christopher Mansfield, Westminster College, working with RCG awardees, oral:
Environmental Influences of Methylmercury Photo-Degradation Rates at the Great Salt Lake - Hannah Peterson, UVU, working with RCG awardees, poster:
Temporal and Spatial Variations of Trace Metal Loading to Utah Lake - Jordan Risley, USU, iFellow, poster:
The Impact of Farm Ties on Concern About Climate Change - Matthew Barnett, USU, iFellow, poster:
Does Water-Based Outdoor Recreation have an Impact on the Environmental Concerns and Perceptions of Utahns? - Viviane Baji, USU, iFellow, poster:
Impact of Age on Water Shortage Concern - Zack Oldroyd, USU, iFellow, oral:
Utah Water Voices
Now in its 10th year, UCUR gives students the chance to formally present visual and/or oral presentations of their work in a scholarly setting to students, faculty, field specialists, and community members. It also offers an informal networking opportunity. State colleges and universities take turns hosting UCUR. Next year’s Conference will be held at Utah Valley University.
Press: U of U Press Release | Daily Utah Chronicle | Deseret News | Fox 13 News
February 19, 2016
iUTAH Team Lead Receives NSF CAREER Award
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Utah State University junior faculty member Jeff Horsburgh winner of an Early CAREER award. Jeff is one of two Engineering faculty members at USU to be chosen to receive the prestigious CAREER Award this year. The grant of approximately $500,000 will help advance fundamental research in areas of water resources engineering and computer science.
Horsburgh is using iUTAH datasets, data, and sociology infrastructure to inform his research which contributed to this award. His research will focus on smart water metering technology, including new tools to collect, shrink and transform the data into useful information products for water managers.
For more on the Horsburgh research, visit “Two USU engineering professors receive prestigious grants" published on February 24, 2016, Herald Journal
February 15, 2016
City Councils Hear Water Survey Results
Throughout January, iUTAH researchers Doug Jackson-Smith, Melissa Haeffner, and Sarah Hinners presented the findings of the iUTAH 2014 survey to city councils in the greater Salt Lake Valley area.
Initially, more than 2,300 households were surveyed in Cache, Salt Lake, and Wasatch counties in the summer of 2014. The survey collected detailed information about how local residents in distinctive neighborhoods use and think about water in their daily lives. Since that time, survey results have been compiled and processed, and are available to researchers, water managers, and the general public at the iUTAH website. The survey provides extensive scientific data on current residential water management and public support for a range of water policies.
The next step of this process is to share these findings with local and state water managers. So far, presentations on how local residents use and think about water in their daily lives have been made to the South Jordan, Riverton, and West Jordan city councils, reaching between 35 and 60 participants. “We are excited to continue building our relationship with the people of the Salt Lake Valley,” said Doug Jackson-Smith. “It was a great opportunity to return to the city to share our survey results while introducing our ongoing project to elected city council persons. “
More presentations will be made in the coming months, including one to the Salt Lake City council.
Photo Credit: Melissa Haeffner
January 26, 2016
Where Does the Water From Snow Actually Go?
Each winter, as the snow falls across Utah, hope grows that the accumulating snowpack will ease our drought conditions, and supply the state with water throughout the year. While snowfall can happen anywhere in the state, it accumulates most in the mountains, where elevation, aspect, and vegetation cover vary greatly. Natural disturbances such as fires and insects further alter the landscape, and change the way the snow accumulates and contributes to our watershed.
These are subjects that interest Jordan Maxwell, graduate research assistant and PhD student at Brigham Young University. Now into his second year of his research, Jordan is working with faculty advisor Dr. Sam St. Clair to measuring snowpack across gradients of disturbance in Utah’s alpine regions.
For Jordan, a good snowfall gives him the opportunity to ski into remote regions of Utah where he takes snow measurements. While this may sound like a Herculean task, he is especially interested in focusing on areas where the vegetation cover has been disturbed or eliminated by insects or fire to see if these changing conditions influence snow accumulation and water retention. One of the questions he wants to answer through his research is-- how do disturbances such as fire and/or tree deaths due to beetle attacks affect how much water will be available to come through our faucets?
Preliminary research conducted during Jordan’s first year examined areas of Twichell Canyon in central Utah, and selected Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) sites, as well as other areas burned by the 2010 Twitchell Canyon fire. SNOTEL, operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), is an automated system, with over 600 sites across 13 states, which measures snowpack and related climate sensors. His findings for this initial research confirmed that there was an inverse relationship between vegetation, density of tree cover, and snow accumulation.
Continuing research conducted this winter will be more robust, covering a larger collection area and a change in location patterns to generate a more random sampling. First, sections of forests are identified by type of forest, along with four categories of fire severity disturbances, including intact, open, moderate, and severely burned. Samples measure for snow water equivalence (SWE), how much water there is in the snow, and snow depth. These measurements will help in developing a GIS snow-water equivalence model to discover how much water is in a watershed, and what changes occur after a disturbance such as fire. Future and follow-up research will look at snow ablation.
Also Jordan will compare the data he is collecting to the SNOTEL data to see how vegetation is affecting snow accumulation. He hopes that his research will provide other researchers working with NRCS, including water and fire managers, a model for predicting how snowfall in an area, and thus usable water, may be altered by changes in vegetation.
By combining research results and data collection into a model that can be used for predictions, Jordan hopes to help researchers predict how much the snowpack is contributing to the watershed in Utah, as well as contribute to helping properly manage and protect it. He will use his findings in two manuscripts summarizing the results of research and data collections, one on SNOTEL, and the other on snow in the post fire conditions of Twitchell Canyon.
When describing his lab at BYU, Jordan says that while research topics range from invasive plant management in sagebrush deserts to grazing patterns of mammals, everyone is interested in the same question: How much water do we have this year? He says that “water is a central point in all their research, it affects everyone.”
Jordan Maxwell, PhD student at Brigham Young University taking snow measurements. Credit: J. Maxwell
